Interesting little story.

Via Fastcompany

Read Herman Miller and Toyota on Edge and Heavy

Much time has passed since Hillman Curtis introduced his Artist Series but that doesn’t stop me from continually drawing new inspiration from them. His piece with famed director Mark Romanek is by far my favorite.

For me, the videos main point is around 3:44.

The content of the video is what immediately draws me in, but credit where credit is due, Hillman Curtis did a great job creating this. I suggest checking out the rest of the videos.

Read Mark Romanek – Hillman Curtis on Edge and Heavy

The singing seems effortless … the emotion that pulls on his face … the man just had it.

Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine

Read Bill Withers – Ain’t No Sunshine on Edge and Heavy

What gets me about people who create is their enthusiasm … their passion. The ability to love what they’re doing for the sake of doing it. It shows in the final work, it’s contagious and it’s generally just positive.

Nataly Dawn and Jack Conte are two talented musicians under the name Pomplamoose (which means grapefruit in French). Their music is light, fun and quirky and you can hear that they like making it. To take things a step further, they record their sessions and create VideoSongs, which not only shows you they have a great time creating but gives personality to their songs.

“VideoSong is a new Medium with two rules:
1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).
2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).”

I can’t really pick a favorite one so here is their latest.

Keep up with them:
YouTube

iTunes

Read Pomplamoose on Edge and Heavy

A few years ago, my former boss and I were in a meeting with a potential client. We were a small company and they weren’t so we needed to make sure we got them as a client, although, we had no idea what they wanted. We heard something about a website, maybe rebranding … we were in the dark. While in the meeting, our strategy was to just learn about them and listen to what they want. I don’t remember how long the meeting went, but the two of us sat there and listened as the president of this relatively large company spoke. He spoke about his business, his hobbies, his building and went off on awry tangents that strained all will power to stay focused. We peppered in some comments and questions and at the conclusion of the meeting, he says to us, “ya know what, I like you guys … because you just listened to what I had to say. We’ve been in meetings with a few other creative companies where they pitched and pitched and didn’t listen to what we wanted” (loosely quoted)

We wound up getting the job simply because we listened. A large part of the delicate client relationship is based on trust, which is fortified on the notion that ‘this person/company understands my needs and goals and is willing to work to that’. Listening also allows you to get a better understanding of the person’s personality which will aid in developing successful material. Now to some people, listening might seem practical, but its mind boggling how many people simply wait to talk.

In the creative world, listening is pinnacle. Ideas can be taken in infinite directions, therefore, it’s the responsibility of the creator to ask and listen to establish the best route. Not listening to what the client wants or what ideas your team have will result in work that doesn’t focus in on the desire of the client and eventually a terrible reputation.

But along with listening, comes questioning. Conversations are a two way street with both parties expressing their opinions, interests and goals. Questioning helps you fine tune the parameters of end product. I often find that with a few thought out questions, the answers become more visible and the solution readies itself quicker.

HBR recently published an article on how to ask better questions and I’m tempted to get these put on cards to hand out to people … here are the four main points:

-Be curious
-Be Open-ended
-Be Engaged
-Dig Deeper

Jan Chipchase’s Future Perfect blog is a great site to check out for examples of listening and questioning. Jan is design researcher for Nokia and as he puts it “… [I] split my time between running user studies and developing new applications, services and products that, if I do my job right, you’ll be using 3 to 15 years from now” He has an ability to question the circumstances around ordinary processes and/or objects … how they came to be taken for granted, their influence on cultures, how cultures influence them etc.

What I really like about his articles is the use of very open ended questions, which allow you to initiate your own internal questioning (should you be interested to do so).

Any other thoughts, questions or resources? Post them in the comments.

Read Listen and Question on Edge and Heavy

From time to time, people tend to utter sounds or bits of words that just sound unlike what they were intended for and if they catch me in the right time, I’ll replay those sounds in head because they sound pretty funny. Maybe I’m weird, maybe you do that too. But so does Pogo, the Australian based electronic musician that created the above video. Sampling dialogue from Up and a self created bed of music, he orchestrates a proper music video.

I might be responsible for 23% of those 1,036,883 views.

He’s got an arsenal of these videos by the way. Check out his YouTube channel here and an unofficial fan page here (White Magic is great)

Read Upular on Edge and Heavy

click to view video

Wired magazine teamed up with the Experience Design team at Adobe to create a Wired app for the tablet. No one has said it’s been made specifically for the iPad, but I’ll go ahead and say that it was made for the iPad. Once you watch the interaction, you’ll know what I mean.

This demo was created with a working app platform, unlike Bonnier’s Mag+ demo (you can see the green screen reflections on their fingers). Moreover, it was created with Adobe AIR, which “lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that run outside the browser on multiple operating systems.” In this case, it allows fully interactive rich content, previously driven via Flash, to be delivered on the iPad, which as you may or may not know, put Flash in the mayonnaise jar. Whether or not you were an initial fan of the iPad, it’s content like this that will be driving the publication industry.

Wired’s app is slated to be release this summer.

Read Wired’s Tablet App on Edge and Heavy

Awesome style and great storytelling.

Via Behance, Pilotthemovie.com

Read Pivot – The Movie on Edge and Heavy

A coworker of mine is returning from a trip … a very far away trip, so I was asked to create a welcome home poster for his return. I sketched out a few ideas then scanned in the one I felt most comfortable with. Everything was created in Illustrator at 72″x36″ and printed on our HP Plotter. It looks cooler on the wall than it does here.

Read Welcome Home Banner on Edge and Heavy

Caught this over at Change The Thought

Read Exit Throught the Gift Shop – Banksy’s Movie on Edge and Heavy